January 2014

Well, here I am again, having skipped a blogging chunk but picking it up now rather than dragging around the weight of too many missed weeks!

Our January started out in a very unusual way...all four of us were sick with the flu, which was our shared "Christmas gift" from our family Christmas in Florida at my parents' -- most of us got it over the course of the week spent together.  It really threw us for a loop, and we spent two whole weeks lying around moaning.  The cats thought it was great to have so many laps available for so long -- they were the only ones who were happy about it!

Eventually we got well enough to get dressed and get started back to school again.  We hit our 100th day of school just before Christmas break, so we are trucking along nicely towards a completed year (180 days)!

David earned some extra credit while we were studying mechanical energy; he (voluntarily!) created a contraption demonstrating a fixed pulley.

We saw a hot air balloon over our house -- a rare occurrence and lots of fun.

Abigail baked gingerbread from scratch mostly by herself -- it was delicious!

We enjoyed a visit to my dad- and mom-in-law's in NC...and guess how many pictures I remembered to take -- NONE!  Grrr.... :(  We enjoyed a peaceful couple of days together (and my two slaw-dogs from Hot Dog World brought much happiness, too!). :)

I sewed a messenger bag as a gift for Abigail's friend's birthday.  I was very pleased with the finished product. (I used this free pattern if you're interested; I made several tweaks, of course, but the basic info is great.)

The kittens are still as adorable as ever.  Felix loves to share grooming love, but the girls don't always appreciate it.  This time it was mutually acceptable and very sweet!

And this week came the crowning event of our month -- SNOW!  Three inches of it, plenty for sledding -- and cold enough temperatures to keep it for a few days!  We have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Day 1...The flakes started to fall and school went downhill fast. :) I gave up and called a snow day, and the kids headed right outside!  We all held our breath and waited to see whether we would get enough for accumulation.

 We didn't have to wait long to know that this was going to be a 'real' snowfall!

 

 Day 2...It stayed, and now had a thick layer of ice underneath it.  More sledding, more fun...what a blast!  We sledded down our neighbor's hill and right across the ice- and snow-covered road toward our yard.

Day 3...it's still here!  We're supposed to inch above freezing temps and start losing it today, but the kids are milking every last ounce of enjoyment out of it that they possibly can.  I have enjoyed it very much, but I must admit that I am rather ready to be done competing with snow for the kids' attention in school, spending significant time during the day bundling and unbundling the kids and drying a zillion layers of clothing so they're ready to use again, and having sore muscles from sledding with the kids!  Yes, I am truly southern now.  I love to get snow for a few days and then I love to give it back again in exchange for our warm sun and easy-to-navigate winter weather! :)

Stay warm!!!

Our week ~ November 11

We had a rather uneventful week (and just for the record -- we LIKE those kinds of weeks a lot!).

Here is Abigail with cast #3 of the serial casting she is having done to help straighten out her foot. (She will need surgery eventually, but they hope to hold off on that until she has done most of her growing.  The Botox, casting, and leg brace will help to 'tide her over' until surgery.  The goal is that, after all of these interventions, she will not need any kind of bracing once she is fully grown.)  The cast doesn't slow her down much -- she and her walking boot take on the world at top speed and you'd never know she has a heavy cast on there when you see her running around!  The only time it hampers us is at bath time...she and I will both be grateful to go back to her independent showering once this process is done. :)

Here is David with his latest science project -- design and build a robotic animal.

Not much to share -- but we think "boring" is preferable to "exciting"! :)

Amazing transformation

We have been watching the transformation of these caterpillars, first as they attached to the lid of their cup and became chrysalides...

 ...and then we watched as they emerged from their chyrsalides...

 ...as these beautiful Painted Lady Butterflies.

 It tied in nicely with one of our science lessons, and it has been really fascinating to watch the whole process!  My favorite part is watching them unfurl their proboscis and drink sugar-water from the flowers (gathered from the kids' bountiful flower-harvest in the garden) and juice from orange slices.

 We have also learned about predators!!!

I'm molting, I'm molting...

(Okay, well, not me actually, but I couldn't resist the play on the famous phrase from the Wizard of Oz!)

Our biggest praying mantis has molted again and this time we got to watch the latter part of the molting process! It was so fascinating (have I mentioned yet how fascinating this whole project has been and continues to be?!)! I'm a little concerned because he hasn't been able to detach the old exoskeleton from the end of his back leg, but we're just going to keep watching it and see what happens. He's eating fine and seems to be getting around fine, and I would assume that eventually the thing will have to rot and fall off! The good news is that he is big enough to actually see in the pictures now! Here he is during the final part of his molt, still hanging from his old exoskeleton on the underside of the branch (hopefully Blogger will let you click on the picture so that you can see an enlarged version):

Praying mantis update

We are down to two praying mantises after the natural processes of the weak, small ones dying off during food competition and after two incidents of major body trauma (Abigail felt possessed to turn their habitat upside down once and David inadvertently knocked it over a few days later). However, the two we have seem to be doing great. The bigger one just went through his first visible molt and it was so neat! He is now about an inch long and starting to turn the green color of an adult mantis ( he is sitting on the upper branch in the picture below). We didn't actually get to see him shed his old exoskeleton, but in the morning, we found it lying on the floor. Not sure how well you can see it in the picture, but it's in the bottom right corner just above the branch; it looks like a ghost figure of a praying mantis. Below is the smaller mantis on the hunt. You can see the fruit fly just ahead of the mantis (the dark thing on the left is a piece of leaf).

Carnivorous pets

Our 100+ mantises have died off over this last week until we now have about a dozen left. We have discovered why there are so many nymphs per ootheca; it's because they're quite stupid and most of them die from starvation (running away from their food in fear), drowning (in the 1/8 inch of water in their water dish), or major body trauma (when they trip and fall off of the walls/ceiling of their habitat)! The ones that are left have gotten much more coordinated; we also knew they had started to eat their fruit flies because the flies would all disappear overnight. Last night we finally got to see a mantis eating a fruit fly -- it was so exciting! I tried to get a picture; it's not great, but it's the best one I could get (the mantis is on the bottom right; his head, as well as his prey in his pincers, are pointing to 7-8 o'clock).

Fascinating infestation

It has been a very bizarre week and a half in many ways...not the least of which bizarre happenings was waking up this morning to an insect infestation in my kitchen. Approximately 100 small insects swarmed all over my sink, counter, and wall. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be miniature praying mantis. At first we were stymied, and then I remembered...on our Christmas tree this year, there was a small thing. Unsure what it was, I decided to keep it so that we could cut it in half in science class sometime and try to figure out what had made it. In the meantime, I had set it on the windowsill between our kitchen and living room. And -- you guessed it -- it was the egg sac of a praying mantis, and it was hatching!!! My response was "Oh, cool!!!", after which Bruce informed me that I was in the mere 1% of the population who would respond that way, and then he happily left for work and left me to happily deal with the insects! I ended up collecting as many as I could in a container and we spent over an hour studying them, doing research on the Internet to learn all we could about our new guests, and figuring out if raising them was a viable option (we're giving it a try). I learned a ton of fascinating things about them. (I know everybody's not as interested as I am, so I won't go into it all, but just in case, there are a couple of informative sites here and here.) I did learn that the egg sac of a praying mantis is called an ootheca (pronounced oh-uh-THEH-kuh). The eggs are laid outside in the autumn, and then once temperatures reach 70 degrees, they will hatch in 2-8 weeks. (Let's see...we bought our tree on Dec. 5th, and so tomorrow would have been seven weeks since we brought the ootheca in to 70ish temperatures. Bingo.) I never would have guessed that at any point in my life I would both purchase and attempt to propogate fruit flies, but guess what mantis nymphs eat? Yup. Fruit flies. Fortunately, PetSmart sells flightless fruit flies. That way the ones that escape while I try to feed them to our young mantises merely crawl around until I catch them, instead of flying away to form a second insect infestation in my house! So far the (apparently not-so-very-bright) mantises haven't figured out that they're supposed to eat the flies. Whenever one of the flies crawls near, the mantises all scatter frantically to escape it. Hopefully instinct will kick in soon! Mantises also tend strongly toward cannibalism, so that should get interesting, too. I could keep rambling, but I'll try to restrain myself. This has just been so very fascinating for both me and the kids! David likes them; he recalled what we learned earlier this year about insects and is anxious for them to start eating so that he can see their chewing mouths in action; he's been using his magnifying glass to try to see their compound eyes and jointed legs. Abigail thinks they're "sweet" and calls them "pretty mantises"instead of "praying mantises". Even Molly was fascinated...